Whistle-Blowers:Saints or Sinners Whistle-Blowers: Are They Saints or Sinners?

Whistle-blowing is the professional form of playground tattling, jail house snitching, breaking the code of Omerta by a mafia kingpin. It is a socially discouraged practice and carries heavy sanctions - "unemployment, and often-times ridicule from [the] company." (Weinberg, March 14, 2005) Weinberg quotes David Stetler, a defense attorney who was part of the defense team for TAP, a pharmaceutical company whose prosecution was initiated by a whistle-blower. Stetler makes the claim that whistle-blowing is bad for a company as "just another form of extortion." (Weinberg, March 14, 2005) One must consider the source when deconstructing such a claim. Of course an attorney who is taking part in the defense of such a lawsuit will make the charge that whistle-blowing is an iniquitous practice; in fact, if one did not hear such statements from such an attorney, his commitment to his case and his own professional standards would be in question. Stetler is clearly defending his clients, as his job requires. Of course whistle-blowing is injurious to the company whose illegal pursuits are being revealed. But is whistle-blowing immoral, vindictive, selfish, as Stetler is inferring by his statement? This writer believes these are the relevant questions that need to be addressed.

Whistle-blowing is never good for a company that is harboring criminal workers or engaging in professionally-sanctioned illegal activity. However,...

Not to do so makes one complicit, not only from a moral standpoint, but from a legal standpoint as well. The fact that whistle-blowing - tattling, telling, snitching - is not only a serious social misstep but also professional suicide is the reason for offering formal financial incentive. If a worker blows the whistle on his company for incompetent, immoral, or illegal operations, he will immediately lose his job and is then subject to professional ostracism, making it impossible to obtain subsequent employment in order to support himself and possibly a family. Financial reward, the precedence for this being set in 1986 with the federal legislation know as the Whistle-Blower law (Weinberg, March 14, 2005), is necessary for the whistle-blower. This serves not only to encourage workers to report illegal job-related practices in the face of social penalties, but to compensate the whistle-blower for his loss of employment, and lost wages, health insurance, and savings and retirement plans that go along with that.
It is conceivable that some whistle-blowers are financially motivated. It is also possible that any worker who goes looking for illegal activity can either find it or fabricate it in the form of a whistle-blower's self-fulfilling prophecy. For example, Weinberg tells us how Douglas Durand's evidence against TAP…